However you define territorial ambitions, it need not be a country that's right next to the U.S. for it to exercise its extraterritorial or territorial ambitions.

It's plain that the American right wing, the Republicans and some sections of the Democratic Party, don't really care about international norms. They believe in the executive authority of the president. They don't even believe the United Nations or international law should play any role vis-à-vis American policymaking.

In the early period of Left struggles, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there were many different trajectories for the struggle, whether you call it 'syndicalism' or 'anarchism' or, at the time, 'social democracy', eventually 'Communism', these were different theories of struggle. But all of them shared a basic understanding that the people...experience exploitation, they experience oppression, but they're not prepared to rise up.

There are cultures that produce different kinds of attitudes, whether it's religion, fatalism, sense of fear, repression, the culture of God and the police minimizes confidence in people.

Mr. Assad is not going to be able to feel like there is a moderate opposition that actually threatens him. Currently, the Assad government looks out at the landscape, sees the rise of ISIS, sees that much of the rebel force has become largely Islamist, and then turns to the West and says, well, you know, they look toward the West and say, well, look, what you have is a terrorist group that's fighting against us. So in this context, I think, to talk about moderate opposition being created to put pressure on Damascus is rather illusionary.

You see often it's not ideas, it's inertia, it's bureaucratism, it's all the other things that sometimes come in the way of a good idea.

You see all kinds of anarchic forms of rebellion, but the moment of preparation is when the Communists and other kinds of political forces play a roll.